Set Your Old Heart Free
by Kat.R.777
Summary: Allison Argent's journey from an innocent seventeen year old girl to a young woman who knows who she is, what she can do, and what she wants out of life. (Allison-centric, plenty of Scallison but ultimately endgame Scisaac and Allison/someone who makes her happy. SPOILERS for up to the 3a finale. Contains slash.)


**Title: Set Your Old Heart Free**

**Characters: Mainly Allison, Scott and Isaac. Stiles, Jackson, Derek, Chris Argent and a few others also pop up occasionally.**

**Pairings: Mainly Allison/Scott and endgame Scott/Isaac. Brief Allison/Isaac, Kira/Scott and Allison/OMC. Also endgame Allison/?**

**Rating: T**

**Warning: SPOILERS for up to the 3a finale. A character from 3b (Kira) plays a very minor role in this fic as Scott's temporary love interest and eventually part of the pack. (What her actual role will be on the show, I have no idea.) Also this contains slash. If that bothers you, kindly find and click the back button.**

**Notes: I was a little hesitant to label this as Allison-centric, because I barely even scratch the surface of her character and the only relationships I explore in any depth are her romantic ones, mainly her relationship with Scott. Nevertheless, I hope this reads first and foremost as Allison's story rather than Allison and Scott's or Scott and Isaac's told through Allison's eyes.**

**Disclaimer: I don't own Teen Wolf or any characters you recognize. The title of this story comes from The Oh Hello's song, Hello My Old Heart, as do the lyrics below.**

* * *

_Nothing last forever_

_Some things aren't meant to be_

_But you'll never find the answer_

_Until you set your old heart free_

* * *

From the very beginning, Allison's relationship with Scott is…turbulent, to say the least. She goes to a party with him and he leaves her stranded. She gives him a second chance and then the night at the school happens and she breaks up with him, because she can't trust him, she _can't_ and she has to do what's best for her.

She runs into Melissa McCall while grocery shopping with her dad a couple days later, and it's awkward, and Allison's sort of expecting to be glared at or at least spoken to coldly, but Mrs. McCall is as warm and genuine as ever (_must be where Scott gets it from,_ Allison can't help but think) and right as they're about to part ways, Mrs. McCall puts a hand on her arm and says (quietly, and sympathetically, and with a certainty more reassuring than any of the comfort Allison's aunt Kate had offered), "You'll be all right."

_._

It's not all right when she finds out Scott's a werewolf. It feels a little like the world is ending, to be honest. And then the world really _is_ ending, because Lydia's in the hospital maybe dying and the Alpha, Peter, has killed Aunt Kate and he's going to kill Allison but Scott saves her (Scott always saves her) and then—_oh god, oh _god_ he's going to kill Scott, no, nonono, please no._

But Stiles and Jackson arrive just in time to help save the day (and later she remembers the way she helped, too; she was strong enough to help, and she hopes she always will be from this moment on) and Derek kills Peter and becomes the Alpha and maybe Scott's never going to be normal but _she loves him anyway._

So she kisses him. And she tells him. And she knows that nothing, not even her dad, will split them apart.

.

She holds onto that faith with everything she has, right up until her mother dies and something in her just _snaps_, and she does awful things that she will later regret, makes mistakes that she will carry with her for the rest of her life.

She doesn't _really_ come back to herself until Jackson's dying in Lydia's arms, and she looks at them and thinks, _What if that was Scott? What if that was me?_ But it's worse than that. It wouldn't have been just Scott dying in her arms. It would've been Scott dying in her arms _because of her_. Because he would have died for her, to save her, or because… because she would have killed him.

Was she really that far gone?

She knots her fingers through Scott's and knows she wasn't. Not that far. Not yet.

Not ever, she decides then and there. She won't become like Gerard, murdering the people she claims to love.

Gerard. She looks around and he's vanished, but she doesn't get the chance to go after him right then because Jackson's coming back to life and Lydia's running into his arms and she wouldn't have killed Scott, not yet, but she would've killed _someone_. Someone like Boyd or Erica or Isaac or _Derek_, and only one of those four deserves it.

The rage is still there; boiling beneath the surface, seconds from igniting. But she restrains herself this time, and then Derek's leaving and Isaac's leaving with him (is it her imagination, or does Isaac glance back at Scott for just a second? What is he doing here in the aftermath of it all, anyway, when he could've run with Erica and Boyd?) and Peter's already gone, and she prays this is the last time she ever sees any of them again.

She's startled when Scott calls out to them to wait—but it's okay, he's not calling out to _them_, just to Isaac. Isaac halts, glances uncertainly between Scott and his Alpha before turning his full attention to the former. Derek stops walking but doesn't bother turning around, just stands there and waits, his back stiff as a board. (_Because you might be an Alpha, but you're not mine._)

"I'll see you at school?" Scott asks, because he's kind and he cares, even about virtual strangers.

When Isaac glances away from Scott this time it's not Derek his gaze falls on. It's Allison. It seems like an almost unconscious movement, his hand lifting to his chest, fingers ghosting over the place where his wounds have undoubtedly already healed. Wounds that Allison inflicted.

He looks back at Scott. Shrugs noncommittally. "Maybe," he says but he glanced back at Scott before, it wasn't her imagination, and even now he seems to have trouble tearing his eyes away. He says maybe, but he means _yes_.

Allison stares at his retreating figure. Isaac is living proof that Scott will always remain tangled up in the world that threatens to turn her into the last thing she wants to be. If she lets it.

She can't. She won't. She'll say goodbye to the supernatural world before she lets herself become a killer. Even if that means saying goodbye to Scott.

.

It's so much harder than she thought it would be. Not that she thought it would be easy, but...saying goodbye, and staying away, and not texting and not calling and she's all the way in France while he's still in Beacon Hills—

But she has her dad, and her mess of grief and guilt to sort through, and those things together keep her from breaking.

They keep her human.

.

She comes back for Junior year and it's still not any easier, because Scott's there nearly every day, smiling and laughing and _dying_, sometimes, but he always makes it through somehow. Sometimes she's responsible for him making it through. Sometimes she's responsible for other people making it through, too. People like Isaac and Boyd and Cora and even Derek, and she's proud of herself for that.

She'd intended to stay out of it all, she really had, but it's like her dad once told her: _What you know makes you responsible._

People are dying. She can't turn away from that any more than Scott can.

.

Helping people, saving lives… It's important, it's so important, but there's still something more she has to do. Still something she owes, especially now that she knows the real reason Derek ended up biting her mother.

She has to apologize.

She starts with Isaac because he's the easiest and because he brings up the whole _you stabbed me twenty times_ thing while they're serving detention together. He forgives her—maybe not right away, and probably mostly because of Scott and because he feels guilty for lashing out at her (_not his fault_), but he still forgives her. Eventually.

Isaac is the easiest because she doesn't hate him.

It's hard to apologize sincerely when you have a bone-deep loathing for the recipient of the apology, but Allison gives it her best and at least Derek doesn't laugh in her face, which is more than she expected. She doesn't really care if he forgives her, anyway. Maybe she'll care once he apologizes back.

(She assumes he never will; she's wrong. It will be years later on Christmas morning following the most embarrassing night of her life to date and she will be halfway to drunk at the time in a pathetic attempt to forget that embarrassment, but Derek will apologize for what happened to her mom, and she will forgive him and he will forgive her and she was never paralyzed by the Kanima but she will sort of understand, after that, what it's like when the venom leaves your system and you can move again, feel again.)

Isaac is the easiest because she didn't attack him in front of his only friend.

Boyd doesn't forgive her. She didn't expect him to. Because it's not Allison's fault that Erica died too soon, far too soon, but it is her fault that he will always have to remember Erica_ begging_ for her to _please, Allison, stop! _

Just as Allison will always have to remember.

(And what hurts the most about it all is not that Boyd never forgives her. It's not that he dies before she gets the chance to earn his forgiveness.

It's that Erica never even lives to get an apology.)

.

The ice tub incident will leave Allison with a permanent darkness around her heart that she feels every day for the rest of her life, but it will also leave her with an extraordinary sense of pride in herself. There's a reason she found the Nemeton that night in the woods, so long ago it seems, and there's a reason she finds it again after sacrificing herself for her dad.

She found it the first time because she was a girl with the potential to become the kind of person who steps up and takes responsibility for the things she knows, the kind of person who protects others.

She finds it the second time because she's a woman who has realized that potential.

So, all in all, drowning in a bath tub full of ice water isn't the worst thing to ever happen to her.

And then there's the person who holds her under.

.

Allison dates Isaac for a lot of reasons. One of them is that she desperately wants to get over Scott (it feels like there's always something trying to break them apart; it feels like it would be better, easier, to just give up the ghost and move on), but there are others and the main one is that she genuinely likes Isaac.

For a while it works. She's fun to hang out with, he's fun to hang out with; she's an awesome girlfriend, he's an awesome boyfriend; she's great in bed, he's great in bed; and—and she's still in love with Scott, and he's clearly in love with Scott, and they're both too in love with Scott for this to ever work out in the long run, aren't they?

(That's the real connection between them, isn't it, the thing that tethered them and allowed Isaac to pull her back when she was finding the Nemeton: their twin overwhelming love for Scott.)

She has to admit it to herself: part of her—a very large part of her—is waiting for Scott the way she knows he's still waiting for her. He might have said he's okay with her and Isaac dating, and he might have something going on with that Kira chick that none of them are yet sure they can trust, but she sees the way his face falls when she reaches for Isaac's hand, sees the way his eyes drift to her even as he's wrapping his arms around his (maybe) new girlfriend.

As for Isaac… Isaac was the one to pull her back because there was no other choice; if the circumstances were different she has no doubt he would've chosen Scott. And beyond all of that, beyond choices and circumstances, she's _never_ been able to pull Isaac back. Not when he wolfs-out because his claustrophobia has kicked in or he's had a nightmare or the full moon has risen, because he's angry or scared or backed into a corner with nowhere to go. Not when he temporarily slips back into that fake persona he wore after he first got turned, all artificial confidence and careless cruelty and forever grappling for control, because he doesn't know what else to do. Not when he falls even further than that, down into some lonely, hopeless void where he feels like he deserves nothing and he's worth nothing and he is nothing and that's the way it will always be.

She can't pull Isaac back from any of that, but Scott can. Scott always has. The way she's always been able to pull Scott back. And it's just too complicated to ever work, when she's Scott's anchor and Scott is Isaac's, so she and Isaac make the mutual decision to break up. They fall into an easy friendship almost immediately, the way she and Scott struggled to for months after their (second) breakup. (The way they're still struggling to, to be honest.)

Scott doesn't break it off with Kira (who turns out to be a decent, albeit not entirely human, person) right away; he's too loyal and too kind to do anything but try to make it work even when he knows he can't. Kira ends up being the one to dump Scott, and he and Allison wait two whole weeks before getting back together—this time, they swear, for good.

.

It's not for good. They get into a huge fight two-thirds of the way through their Senior year over their post-secondary plans and they're broken up all the way through to their graduation night, at which point a coven of vampires attack the school and somewhere amidst the screaming and the clueless people stampeding for the doors and the pack fighting for their lives and just all-around mayhem, Allison finds that the only thing that really matters to her is her lips crashing into Scott's and the way he's frantically murmuring "I love you, I love you, I _love _you, Iwill_always_loveyou" against her mouth.

Later, after they've all miraculously survived and sent the coven packing with minimal collateral damage (meaning massive property damage but no deaths), Stiles complains about their horrendous timing—"You do realize I almost _died_ because you two were too busy sucking face to do something about the psychotic, overgrown mosquito stalking towards me, right, I mean really if Derek hadn't"_—_until they tune him out, and Derek grunts, and Lydia rolls her eyes, and Isaac smiles at them like his face is about to break in half—"Changed my mind about sticking around for college, think I'll be accepting that scholarship to study in London after all"—and he's hoping they won't notice, and her dad makes a face like he's swallowed a lemon, and Kira just looks at them like they're both idiots. But they're together, and that's all that really matters.

.

At least until Scott asks her to move in with him ten months later, and doesn't believe her when she says (truthfully) that the reason for her refusal is that she's just not ready, and she gets so mad she says something awful about how pathetic his dependency on Stiles is and "He's over at your place all the time, I wouldn't want to be a third wheel," and Scott snaps back, "Like you're any better, you spend more time talking to Lydia on the phone then you do talking to me," and it quickly devolves into them tearing each other apart over little things the other does that don't even annoy them that much.

She only waits a month this time before throwing herself back into the dating pool. He's just some (amazing) guy in her summer school course, completely normal, knows nothing about werewolves or hunters or anything supernatural, and he's sweet and kind and caring and… And Allison falls in love with him. For real. The way she was inexplicably unable to with Isaac, who is just about the most wonderful person she's ever met. (Isaac, who is back for the summer; she meets up with him sometimes for drinks, teases him about the sexy English accent he's picked up, gushes about her amazing guy and avoids the topic of Scott just as eagerly as Isaac does.)

It doesn't last with her amazing guy. The closer they get the more opposed she is to the idea of telling him about her, well, secret double-life. Which isn't going to go away anytime soon, even if it is really and truly over with Scott this time.

.

In the end, perhaps the most amazing thing about her amazing guy is that not only was she able to fall in love with him, she's able to fall _out of love_ with him as well, in a way she's still, after everything, inexplicably unable to with Scott. Who she hasn't talked to since the breakup, and who she should probably apologize to (provided he apologizes first).

She calls Scott and asks to meet up at nearby Starbucks, and he does say sorry first, so she says it back. And maybe, just maybe, some part of her is thinking, _Does this mean we're back together?_ The answer, Allison finds out on Labor Day when the entire pack (minus Jackson, who still hasn't returned to Beacon Hills and who barely keeps in contact) meets up at Melissa's place (their first reunion since they all went their separate ways), is no. Because Scott's with Kira now. For real. He's in love with her the way Allison was in love with her amazing guy.

Allison spends most of the reunion hanging out with everyone but Scott and Kira. She gossips with Lydia and Melissa, laughs with Danny and the twins at Stiles' antics, tries to ease the animosity that's still there between her dad and the two remaining Hales (Allison seriously hopes it stays at two; she doesn't think Lydia could take yet another Hale coming back to life, especially Peter again), asks Isaac if he's run into Jackson at all while in London (turns out he has—"He said he probably won't be back for Christmas, but he's definitely going to be back next summer") and listens in on Deaton, Morrell and the Sheriff discussing the possible existence of aliens (_please_ no) in the most serious tones imaginable.

And when the reunion's over, and everyone's split up again, and Scott is still with Kira, Allison goes on with her life. She learns to deal with seeing them together and meets up for coffee or paintball or rock climbing with them and Stiles and sometimes one or more of the others once every couple of weeks. She keeps going even when they move in together, although she doesn't try dating again.

She wakes up one morning to find that Scott and Kira have broken up, and wakes up another morning a few weeks later to find Scott has left a voicemail on her phone asking if she wants to be his date to a Halloween party. She goes to the party with him, dressed as Catwoman to his…Robin? ("Stiles wanted to be Batman," is all Scott will say on the subject, and frankly all he really needs to.) When she asks him what happened with Kira, he just shrugs and says, "Didn't work out", which is, you know, _Thank you Captain Obvious_, she thinks but doesn't say, and lets it go.

.

She's never going to regret turning Scott down that time he asked her to move in with him, because she wasn't ready then and she did what was best for her. But she's ready now and she knows she'd regret turning him down if he asked again, so she doesn't even wait, this time she does the asking. And it's great, it's perfect. Allison and Scott together, the way she's starting to believe fate intended. After all, how many times have they fallen apart only to fall back together again? It must be fate.

_No such thing as fate, _a voice inside her mind whispers some nights, but then she turns her head just a little and finds Scott's head has migrated to her pillow and she thinks back fiercely, _No such thing as werewolves._

.

When she wakes up on Christmas morning, she's half wishing that was true. If werewolves weren't real, maybe fairies wouldn't be real either. Specifically, fairies with a knack for lust spells and a penchant for mischief.

The entire pack (minus Jackson, as usual, but maybe it's a good thing he wasn't there this time) swears to never speak of the events of that December 24th ever again. It's an oath Allison intends to keep because that night was quite possibly the most embarrassing night of her life, except… Scott's—different, after that.

He smiles at her just as big as he used to but it shrinks a second later. He cuddles with her after sex but leaves the bed in the middle of the night only to fall asleep on the couch watching TV. Without her.

A lot of things become _without her_ after that Christmas, until finally Allison gets so fed up that she corners Scott and outright asks him what his problem is, "Is this because of what happened on Christmas Eve, because that was _not_ my fault, I'm not going to apologize for that fairy bewitching me to nearly have a threesome with Derek Hale and your best friend—"

He hurries to interrupt her, "Of course not, no, obviously I know that wasn't your fault, I don't want an apology,_" _and she could let it go, but she won't. Not this time.

.

It turns out, it's not about what Allison did that night. It's about what Scott did. Or rather, _who _Scott did.

He hurries to correct, "_Nearly_ did. We passed out before we could actually get around to—you know."

But oh, he'd wanted to. He won't admit it, not even to himself, but he can't hide it from her, she knows him too well. Knows that he'd wanted to. Knows that he's wanted to every day since. Knows that he's probably wanted to since long before that, months before that, maybe even years.

Scott can deny it all he likes, can protest that he'd just missed Isaac ever since he'd moved to London, _missed_ him, not _wanted_ him, but that doesn't change the truth.

Kira had noticed it too, back when she was dating Scott (the second time) and that's why, Scott admits now, they'd broken up (the second time).

"But she was wrong. It's not like that," Scott says now, so earnest. "I just… I just missed him. Like crazy. I just miss him like crazy. You and Stiles and Lydia and the others, you're all my pack, but it's not the same. I miss running wild with him on the full moons. I miss having his back and knowing he has mine. I miss him being able to look me in the eye."

Allison wonders how they got here, how she woke up to a morning where Scott's in love with Isaac and doesn't know it, even now refuses to know it. She thinks of high school and how Scott always brought Isaac back to himself, and how she always brought Scott back to himself but sometimes Isaac did too. She thinks of how Isaac ran all the way to London, ran from his love for Scott the way Jackson ran from the blood on his hands, and of how much Scott really did miss him every second he was gone. Really does. Every second. She thinks of how she woke up one morning last summer in love with her amazing guy and woke up another morning that same summer out of love with him. She thinks, _No such thing as fate. No such thing as werewolves._

She thinks, _Set his heart free, and he'll bring it back to you someday. He always does._

.

It takes Scott a month to admit he wants Isaac, and another to admit he's in love with him. He spends the two months after that flip-flopping back and forth, _Should I tell him, should I call him and tell him, what if he gave up on me, I mean why wouldn't he give up on me, it's been months, it's been years, it won't work out anyway, he lives in London, I can't do it, it'll ruin our friendship_.

All this Allison hears from Stiles, or rather, from Lydia who heard it from Stiles, because Scott at least has enough tact to not ask for relationship advice from the girl he just broke up with (again). After hearing all this Allison thinks, _To hell with tact,_ marches over to Scott's apartment (it used to be _theirs_) and shoots down all of his excuses one by one as though they're painted targets on an archery range, just begging for her to hit the bull's-eye.

"Tell him. He's coming back to Beacon Hills for the summer, you're going back to Beacon Hills for the summer, simple math. It'll ruin your friendship? When's the last time Isaac even looked at you properly, let alone talked to you? It's already ruined. Just tell him. Just spit it out or you'll regret it for the rest of your life."

He seems grateful, if embarrassed, that she's trying to help. She doesn't tell him that the reason she's pushing so hard to get him to say something to Isaac is that she knows this has been eating at them both for a long time, and even though she knows they won't last (_I've always had this feeling like I'm a little psychic_) she also knows they need to give it a shot before they can truly move on. Before they can truly be happy, Scott with Allison and Isaac with… someone. Someone who's not torn in two. Someone who can make him happy the way he deserves, the way he's always deserved. Someone who can make him _aware_ that he's always deserved to be happy.

.

It should be simple after that, except when Isaac arrives back from London, Jackson is with him (finally, _finally_ he's come home, after all this time Jackson's come home) and Scott somehow, inexplicably, _impossibly _concludes from this that—"You see, he's moved on, he's with Jackson now."

Jackson. _Jackson?_ And Isaac. Jackson and Isaac. Jackson and _Isaac_. Allison and Stiles exchange their patented Exasperated Glance Over Scott McCall's Stupidity to End All Exasperated Glances Over Scott McCall's Stupidity, and then play rock-paper-scissors to determine who's going to field this one, and then have five rematches because Stiles is horrible at rock-paper-scissors and is clearly very opposed to fielding this one. Allison is also very opposed to fielding this one, so she comes up with a genius solution that involves neither she nor Stiles fielding this one.

She drags Derek over to Melissa's house (where Scott is staying for the summer, and Isaac too—Melissa insisted, apparently for old time's sake—but he's out at the moment) and she, Stiles and Scott basically end up repeating every conversation they've ever had on the subject of Scott, Isaac, Scott's love for Isaac and his reluctance to tell Isaac of said love.

Derek looks very uncomfortable when they start. Possibly because it's the first time he's been in a room with both Allison and Stiles at the same time since they nearly had a threesome last Christmas. Derek looks done with life altogether when they finish. Possibly because they're asking him to interfere in Scott and Isaac's love life.

He looks back forth between Stiles and Allison's pleading faces for several minutes before sighing, turning to Scott and saying slowly, "Scott, Isaac is not with Jackson. He is not dating Jackson, or having sex with him, or in love with him. They just took a plane together, that's all. Now, you're going to tell Isaac how you feel, or I'm going to rip your throat out. With my teeth. Okay?"

"Okay," Scott squeaks.

.

Allison's not there when Scott finally tells Isaac, but later she gets a pretty thorough summary—whether or not it's entirely accurate is another story—of how the conversation went from Lydia who gets it from Stiles who eavesdropped on most of it: Isaac doesn't believe Scott at first, thinks he's playing a joke, and then he seems to remember that Scott doesn't have that kind of cruelty in him, and then he says, "I've waited for you for so long. And all that time, you've been waiting for Allison. How do I know you're not still waiting?" and Scott's answer, whatever it is (no one ever tells her, and for years later she wonders why), convinces him and then they kiss, and then they have really great, really hot sex.

(At least, Allison assumes it's really great and really hot, Stiles doesn't stay for that part and Scott and Isaac don't exactly give out details, but it's _Scott_ and _Isaac_, how could it be anything but really great and really hot?)

And Allison sees how happy they are together and hates herself a little because she knows, _she knows_ it won't last, and god, the last thing she wants is for Isaac to be hurt, but… But they needs this, and it'll all work out someday, she assures herself. Scott will set his heart free, his and Isaac's both, and then they can all start over and they won't make any of their old mistakes and they'll all find their happily ever afters, or at least as close as anyone can get.

She believes that with all her heart, believes that Isaac will someday be happy with someone other than Scott, so it's only a little that she hates herself for how she's waiting for Scott to fall out of love with Isaac. The way she fell out of love with her amazing guy, the way Scott fell out of love with Kira, the way Allison and Scott have never, after all this time, fallen out of love with each other.

.

It takes her a long time to notice, but Scott does fall out of love with Isaac. Scott falls out of love with him every time Isaac polishes off the last of Scott's Lucky Charms without asking, or takes too long in the shower when Scott really needs to wash up before heading to work, or keeps Scott up for hours with his snoring, and he falls right back into it a second later when Isaac offers to make him eggs instead, or exits the bathroom without any clothes, or rolls over in his sleep and starts drooling on Scott's shoulder.

(How does she accumulate all this info? Well, mostly through accidental observation—she stays over at Scott and Isaac's sometimes for various deadly-supernatural-creatures-related/ wild-partying-related reasons—which was more than a bit awkward in the case of naked-and-dripping-wet Isaac and clearly-very-very-_very_-turned-on Scott and maybe-possibly-slightly-aroused Allison, but they get past it because nothing is ever going to top That One Christmas Eve We Never Talk About. And also through Stiles, with his tendency to pry into people's personal lives and then not keep what he learns to himself.)

Still, she holds onto hope until one beautiful sunny day when, two summers after they've all graduated from college, the pack (well, most of them; half of them, anyway, everyone who's not busy or Deaton, who is apparently too dignified to ride on roller coasters) goes to an amusement park together.

Scott's been acting like a lunatic around Isaac for three months now, and Allison's thinking, _This is it. Any day now, he's going to set his heart free, his and Isaac's both. _But it doesn't feel like the fresh start she's been waiting for. It feels a little like the end of the world. Suddenly she's not so sure they'll all find happiness somewhere down the road, and either way she doesn't want Scott and especially Isaac to suffer in the meantime.

And then Scott buys a cheap lime-flavored ring pop from a vending machine—the worst flavor in the history of ring pop flavors—and gets down on one knee and proposes to Isaac with it.

Lydia and Jackson both scramble to pull out their phones to record the scene that Stiles is already filming with his digital camera (clearly, he knew this was coming; his camera usually never leaves his apartment), though she doubts they all want footage for the same reasons. Derek is staring in what might be amused disbelief. Allison's dad is…paying more attention to Allison then the proposal going on right in front of him, which, no, she's not going to break. Not in front of her friends and all the people watching Scott and Isaac like they're a circus show (either in a _ugh, freaks_ way or a _ohmygosh they're more adorable than baby pandas _way). (Some of the onlookers have their phones out, too, this is definitely going to wind up on YouTube by the end of the day and Allison will never escape this moment, it's going to follow her for the rest of her life, isn't it.)

"Scott," Isaac says. He sounds like he's trying not to laugh. "You do realize that's my least favorite flavor. Everyone's least favorite flavor. The worst flavor in the history of ring pop flavors."

"Well I wasn't gonna keep putting my pocket change in until blue-raspberry came out." A pause, during which Allison numbly recalls blue-raspberry is Isaac's favorite flavor for Everything Ever. "Well. Actually I was, but there were like five kids and their moms behind me and one of the moms was glaring at me and— That's not the point here. The point is— Okay I feel like an idiot just kneeling here, but—"

Scott stands up. He wriggles the ring pop in Isaac's face. "Seriously, dude, marry me."

And Isaac looks at the ring pop, his least favorite flavor and probably worth less than a dollar and s_till in its plastic wrapping_. And he looks at Scott, who stares back at him with a lopsided smile on his face like that's going to disguise how nervous he is.

Allison flashes back to the night, years ago, when the Kanima fiasco finally came to an end. It's almost like history repeating, because it's the same people here (minus Peter and Gerard, who are—considering all the damage they both did, she only feels a little bad for thinking it—thankfully both dead); the original pack before they were even really a pack.

The pack before Melissa really became a part of it, before they learned Erica was dead and Cora was alive, before Boyd was killed, before they found out who and what Deaton and Morrell really were, before the Sheriff finally believed, before the Alphas twins came around to their side, before Kira earned their trust, before they finally told Danny everything.

Almost like history repeating. Because Scott's asking Isaac to be a part of his life again (_I'll see you at school?_), for the rest of their lives this time. Because Allison's losing Scott again (_Scott I'm trying to break up with you_), for good this time.

This time there will be no one to tell her, _I know we're going to be together._

This time Isaac doesn't tell Scott _maybe_ like he means _yes_.

He just tells him, "Yes." And means it.

.

It hurts both more and less than she thought it would. In the times when it hurts more, she wonders if maybe she needs some space, like she needed space after the Kanima fiasco. Four months in France.

She's thinking London this time, because Jackson and Isaac both fled to London when they needed space and everything seems to have turned out all right for them; fantastically, even, in Isaac's case.

But the thing is, the only way to stop history from repeating is to learn from it. And what she learns when she looks at the choices Jackson and Isaac both made, and the consequences of those choices, is that things only turned out all right for them when they came back. When they came _home_. All the space is the world didn't keep them from being miserable. It didn't bring them peace. Everything they were searching for—the forgiveness Jackson _needed_, the love Isaac _craved_—they found in the very place they'd fled from.

She looks at her own history, her own choices, thinks of how she'd fled to France years ago having hung up her bows and arrows. She'd believed that to be the only way to stop herself from becoming a heartless killer. Yet she'd returned to Beacon Hills and found her way back into the supernatural world, and since then she's never spilled even a drop of innocent blood. What keeps her from crossing that line is her dad and her friends, but more than that, it's her own compassion, her own strength. Four months in France didn't give her those things. She already had them.

Running to London won't fix anything, because Allison already has the strength to fix things, to move on from this. She's not going to give up her life here in California because two stupid boys (she refers to Scott and Isaac as such with all the love in the world) finally got their act together and decided to tie the knot.

Running from her pain won't make Allison happy, because in the times when it hurts less, Allison _is_ happy. Ridiculously happy, for Scott and Isaac and the happiness they've found together. She would rather be ridiculously happy for them in between being ridiculously jealous and ridiculously sad than an ocean away missing them. Missing her dad, and Lydia, and Stiles, and her _pack_.

She's not just happy for her stupid boys; she's happy with her life in general. Even in the times when it hurts more.

So Allison's not going to run away. And she's not going to sit around pointlessly waiting for someone who, she can admit now, her heart has long since given up on.

She's going to set her heart free. She's going to keep living her life—her crazy, dangerous, happy life that's filled to the brim with love—and someday she's gonna find someone to share it with.

.

It's not even two years after Scott and Isaac's wedding that Allison finds that someone. Someone who's so familiar to her and yet a total stranger. Someone who makes her fall out of love with them every time they try to sneak into bed in the middle of the night when she's already sleeping but end up stepping on the floorboard that creaks (_every—single—time_) and waking her up. Someone who makes her fall right back into it a second later when they slip under the covers beside her and press a sleepy, apologetic smile to her bare shoulder. Someone who looks at her like she's unbelievably precious, and makes her believe it.

_You'll_ _be all right_, Melissa had told her the very first time she'd broken up with Scott, all those years ago, and her certainty had been so reassuring.

If there's anything Allison's certain of now, it's that she's more than all right.

* * *

**Notes: If you're wondering if I was at any point trying to imply a certain pairing involving the secondary characters (everyone other than Allison, Scott and Isaac), the answer is probably yes. I thought about making it clear that Character A is with Character E and Character B is with Character C, etc, but ultimately I decided to leave it up to the reader.**

**Same goes for who Allison ended up with. It could be someone she'd never met before who makes her feel like she's known them her whole life, or it could be someone she's known for years who feels a little like a stranger because she's getting to know them all over again in an entirely different way. It could be Lydia, or Jackson, or Derek, or Stiles, or Cora, or Aiden, or Kira, or a miraculously alive Erica, or a miraculously alive Boyd, or even a miraculously alive in the form of a _not _psychotic stalker/killer Matt. Anyone you want it to be, other than Scott or Isaac, provided they make Allison happy.**

**Anyways, this is my first venture into Teen Wolf fic so feedback, especially constructive criticism, would be greatly appreciated. I won't be offended if you didn't like it, especially if you tell me what you disliked about it and what I can do to improve.**


End file.
